Page 35 of Darkness and Deceit (Obsidian Academy #2)

Thirty-Two

LILITH

Well, the Protectors stationed outside Headmistress Bennett’s office door are new.

They stand on either side, motionless, and armed to the teeth. A silent message before I even step inside. I don’t flinch, but my pulse ticks up.

Bennett doesn’t rise when I enter.

She sits behind her desk, spine straight, hands folded neatly on the surface as if she’s waiting for me to confess to something she already knows. The raven on her shoulder shifts once, fixing its eyes on me. Watching. Weighing. Judging.

She gestures to the chair in front of her desk with the flick of two fingers, and I sit—barely holding myself together.

There are so many things I want to demand answers about, but I know going on the offense will get me nowhere.

The silence stretches. And stretches. Until it’s not silence anymore—it’s a weapon. One she wields with the precision of someone who’s spent decades perfecting how to make someone squirm without saying a single word.

When it’s clear Bennett won’t be the one to speak first, I do.

I lay it all out. The cave. The Rogues. Magnus. The faces in the walls. Every single horrifying detail Augustus and I experienced.

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. No shock. No horror. Nothing.

Finally, I ask, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

The raven blinks. She doesn’t.

When she finally speaks, her tone is as cold as ice.

“You have brought nothing but disruption to this academy.” She leans forward slightly, her hands folded over a stack of papers she clearly isn’t reading.

“You’ve tampered with things you don’t understand.

Wield powers you were never meant to possess.

Everything was Balanced before you arrived. ”

Behind my ribs, something splinters.

Because that’s not just blame.

That’s condemnation.

“You think this is my fault?” I ask, my voice flat. “That I’m the reason your walls are cracking and the dead are screaming from under the floors?”

“Not the reason.” Her gaze cuts through me like a scalpel. “The trigger.”

Disbelief flares. “This all started before I even got here.”

“And yet,” she says smoothly, “the cracks didn’t form until you stepped onto the shore.”

I shoot to my feet. I don’t mean to. I’m just tired of pretending I haven’t bled for this place. That I haven’t nearly died for it.

“I didn’t ask for any of this. I came here to become a Protector. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps. I didn’t ask to be a Dual. I didn’t ask to be a freak.”

Her lips don’t move, but I swear the word lands. Freak. Like it confirms something she’s always believed.

My fists curl at my sides. “You kept Magnus locked in the dark under our feet and didn’t tell anyone. You let us believe this place was safe. And now you’re blaming me for digging up the rot you buried.”

Still, she says nothing.

So I say it for her.

“I’m not sure I want to be a Protector anymore,” I admit. My voice trembles, but I don’t back down. “Not if it means protecting secrets like this.”

The silence stretches so long I don’t think she’ll answer at all.

Eventually, she sighs. “Tell Simon, Vaughn, and Kai that I’d like a word with them. I know they’re waiting for you out there.”

I stand, fury and confusion and hurt simmering in my chest. “And Lilith,” she adds, just as I reach the door. “You are to remain in your chambers until further notice.”

I don’t nod. Don’t speak. I just leave.

Simon and Vaughn are waiting in the hall, Kai too—his back pressed against the wall, arms crossed, eyes hard. He doesn’t say anything when I pass, but I feel his gaze track me the whole way.

“She wants you,” I say to them quietly. “Now.”

Simon starts to say something, but I don’t stop. I can’t. My body feels like it’s made of glass. Like one wrong word and I’ll shatter. I need to move. I need to not be here. I need air.

Not even Kai tries to stop me.

I don’t know where I’m going. I just walk.

Past the guards. Past the glowing sigils etched into the stone. Down corridors that suddenly feel too narrow, and too quiet. The heavy weight of warding magic buzzes faintly against my skin, and it no longer feels protective—it feels like a cage.

Some of the other students watch me as I pass. Not all of them. But enough that I feel the weight of it. Eyes lingering too long. Whispers that hush the second I glance their way.

The freak.

The Dual.

The girl who cracked the academy open.

I press a hand to my ribs, flinching at the raw sting beneath my fingertips. The skin’s still sticky. Still torn.

Without thinking, I take the nearest turn, ducking into an empty hall. My vision swims for a second. I can’t cry. I won’t cry. But the pressure behind my eyes feels like it might burst any second.

The shadows in the corners of the corridor shift slightly, the light warping like heat off stone.

Fuck. Not again.

I blink once, then twice—but they’re still there. Moving just out of reach. Like smoke caught in a breeze.

“Lilith?”

I jump.

Tony stands a few steps away, arms awkwardly half-lifted like he wasn’t sure whether to hug me or run. His shaggy hair is more of a mess than usual, and his shirt’s rumpled like he hasn’t changed since yesterday. Behind his glasses, his eyes go wide.

“Well, you look like shit,” he says.

And just like that, the breath I didn’t realize I was holding collapses out of me.

A tear escapes, but I swipe it away before it’s even halfway down my cheek.

Tony doesn’t mention it. He just wraps one arm around my shoulders like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Been a rough day,” I mutter.

“Understatement of the century,” he replies.

We start walking without even talking about it. Just two students, side by side, pretending—for a moment—that the academy is still what we thought it was when we arrived. That things make sense. That we’re safe.

Tony fills the silence. “I swear, the professors have lost their minds. Mr. Larkwell tried to hold class in the middle of the quad. Someone accidentally transformed their textbook into a swarm of bees. He just stood there screaming, ‘The mind must triumph over mayhem!’ like that was going to fix it.”

I barely hear him.

Because something’s wrong.

The shadows aren’t just shifting at the edges of my vision—they’re moving. Crawling. Sliding across the floor, curling up the walls, seeping through cracks in the stone like water.

But it’s not water.

It’s thick. Oily and dark and pulsing like it has a heartbeat of its own.

Not like Kai’s shadows.

These are wrong.

My feet stop. “Tony?—”

“I see it,” he says. His voice is clipped now. Focused. “I see it.”

We both turn at the same time.

The hallway darkens.

Panicked screams echo from below—climbing up the stairwells from the lower levels like a warning siren. I recognize that sound. That kind of fear doesn’t come from surprise. It comes from knowing you’re already too late.

Then we see it.

A wall of black turns the corner at the end of the hall. It pours across the floor in a fast, gleaming tide, coating everything in its path—like living tar, like shadow melted down into muscle and hunger. It doesn’t crawl. It flows. Fluid and intelligent. Fast.

“Run!” Tony yells, already pulling me backward.

I don’t know where we’re going—there’s no safe place left—but we run. We tear down the hall, taking turns too fast, almost slipping on the stone. The darkness floods behind us, filling the space with an oily hiss.

When we hit the stairs, we take them two at a time. Higher, higher, until Tony trips over a step and I grab him, yanking him upright by the elbow. I taste blood in my mouth, probably from biting the inside of my cheek.

The shriek of the thing reverberates through the stairwell, impossibly close.

“Keep going,” I hiss, urging Tony to run faster. He doesn’t let go of my wrist, and his grip is so fierce it feels like my bones might splinter, but I don’t let go. I’m afraid of what will happen if I do.

We cut hard left, down a corridor that’s so narrow Tony’s shoulder clocks a sconce and shatters it. Sparks spit onto the black-tide pooling at our heels; for a split second, the shadow recoils from the flecks of fire, but then it surges forward, swallowing the embers whole, hungrier than before.

“Where the hell are we going?” Tony gasps, tripping over his own feet.

My lungs are burning. My vision swims. I don’t have an answer—because there shouldn’t be a question. The academy is supposed to be warded against shit like this. This thing shouldn’t be here. It shouldn’t have gotten through.

“The academy’s warded,” I mutter without thinking. “It’s sealed. It shouldn’t have gotten in…”

“Yeah?” Tony pants. “Tell that to the ink tsunami chasing us!”

He’s right. And I know that whatever this is, it’s here for me. Every twist we take, it follows. Every floor we climb, it rises. It’s hunting me.

We bolt around another corner—this one ending in a sealed stairwell door.

Tony skids to a stop, nearly slamming into it. “Dead end,” he chokes out.

“No,” I say. “No, no, no?—”

I slam my palm against the door, trying to will it open. It doesn’t budge.

“Backtrack?” he asks, wild-eyed.

Behind us, the hallway ripples with black.

It’s closing in.

“No time,” I say, grimly.

I try the door again, this time with every ounce of power I can muster. Violet flares and pulses down my arm. The handle still doesn’t budge.

Tony grits his teeth. “Let me,” he mutters, and lays his palm next to mine. His power hums intuitively with mine. He closes his eyes, jaw clenched, veins standing out on his neck.

I feel something shift inside the mechanism, like a bone popping back into place. The lock snaps, metal shrieking as the door springs open and we stumble through it, breath ragged, lungs burning.

It slams shut behind us—but the darkness doesn’t care about doors. It seeps through the cracks. Squeezes under the hinges. Pours in like it belongs here.

“Go,” Tony says, whirling on me. His voice is firm and fierce. “Run, Lilith.”

“No.” My hands spark with barely controlled power. “Not without you.”

The tide is too close now, curling along the ceiling, rolling like a storm cloud ready to drop.

Tony doesn’t argue. He just moves.

He raises both hands, and pale lavender light explodes from his palms—brighter than I’ve ever seen it. It lights up the stairwell like dawn. Then I see his rabbit. It’s small, soft, glowing at the edges like a flame that refuses to go out.

It darts in front of me, shielding me as the black lunges.

And then?—

The darkness lashes out and for a moment the world goes silent, like the air’s been vacuumed out from around us.

Tony’s rabbit is caught mid-leap with a black tendril wrapped around its tiny, glowing chest, squeezing until the light fractures and falters. The rabbit flickers, a strobe of lavender before it’s snuffed out like a candle pinched between fingers.

Tony drops, knees buckling, fists digging into his temples. “No!” His scream rips through the stairwell.

Rage doesn’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling. Whatever force is inside of me ignites—something raw and animal and ancient, a fierceness that belongs to neither Predator nor Prey but to me alone.

Violet light surges down my arms, erupting from my fingertips and with it my Shadows flare—deer and fox both—charging toward the mass of black.

For a split-second, the oily darkness hesitates, as if startled by the boldness of the attack. The shadows ripple like a startled pool, retreating momentarily.

But then it gathers itself again, the inky blackness morphing into countless tiny eyes that flicker open, each one reflecting a sinister curiosity in the eerie violet light.

It dawns on me that this is not a single entity but a multitude—an amalgamation of every haunting fear that has ever lurked beyond the reach of the sun.

My deer and fox charge without hesitation. My deer lowers its head, antlers thrusting forward with precision, battering the darkness. My fox snarls, its sharp teeth bared and snapping, as they dive fearlessly into the heart of the writhing mass.

I feel the collision of magic in my bones.

My Shadows and the darkness crash with a sound like tearing silk.

The deer staggers, legs mired in tar that rises up to drag it down.

The fox is more nimble, darting circles around the black, biting at anything it can reach, leaving sizzling streaks of violet that the darkness recoils from, even if only for a heartbeat.

The fox tries to circle back to me—but it’s too late.

One of the dark tendrils snaps forward like a whip and pierces straight through its chest. It jerks once, then flickers out of existence in a pulse of violet light.

“No—!” My voice breaks and my chest feels like it’s being cracked open.

My deer cries out and stumbles as the black coils around its legs, dragging it down. Its antlers flash one last time, flaring with defiance, before the mass swallows it whole. Gone. Both of them, gone.

I double over, breath choking on a sob. The loss sears through me, raw and intimate and shattering. Shadows can’t die—not exactly. But they can be broken. Shattered. Ripped apart by something stronger.

And when that happens, it feels like losing a limb. Like being flayed from the inside out. They’re part of me, tethered to my magic. My essence.

Tony stumbles toward me, blood dripping from his nose, magic fraying. His hands tremble. His mouth opens like he’s trying to say something—but no sound comes out.

And then?—

He shoves me behind him.

His hands are shaking. His knees are barely holding him up. But he plants himself between me and the dark, like a goddamn wall. Like he thinks he can hold it back with nothing but his body and the last flicker of his light.

“Tony—no!”

His head turns enough for our eyes to meet. And there’s so much there. Not fear. Not panic. Just… resolve. Like he always knew this moment might come. Like he’d do it again.

My friend.

My first real friend here.

A flicker of a smile twitches on his face.

The shadow strikes again.

It hits him like a freight train. No time to scream. No time to move.

One second he’s there?—

And the next, he’s gone.

The black tide slams into me before I can even process it. I scream, hurling every last drop of power I have, violet flaring like wildfire through my limbs, ripping at the dark with all the fury I can summon.

But it isn’t enough.

It crashes over me, into me, through me.

The cold is instantaneous and infinite. Like drowning in ink. Like being pulled out of time. Like every memory I’ve ever had is unraveling from the inside out.

I feel my magic fracture.

And then the darkness takes me, too.